Classification of Microorganisms Flashcards
What is taxonomy?
The science of classifying organisms
Two advantages of taxonomy?
Provides universal names for organisms and provides a reference for identifying organisms
Who is the ‘father of taxonomy’?
Carl Linnaeus
What two major ideas did Carl Linnaeus come up with?
Scientific nomenclature and natural classification
What is scientific nomenclature?
The naming of organisms, 1st part is the genus and the second part is the species name
What is phylogeny?
The study of the evolutionary history of organisms
What is hierarchy?
A hierarchy is an organizational structure in which items are ranked according to levels of importance.
What is a taxon?
A group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit.
The hierarchy of taxa reflects…
Phylogenetic relationships
What is natural classification?
The theory of grouping species according to shared physical traits
What did Linnaeus propose as the Kingdoms?
Animalia, Vegetabilia and Minerals
What was the main downfall of natural classification proposed by Linnaeus?
Bacteria and archaea not considered by Linnaeus
Where did Nageli propose that bacteria should be placed?
In the plant kingdom - led to the term microflora
Who introduced the Protista kingdom?
Haeckel - grouped bacteria, protozoa, fungi and algae in to protista
Chatton came up with two kingdoms, prokaryota and eukaryota in 1937, why?
He used electron microscopy and distinguished between nucleated and non-nucleated cells
Before Carl Woese, what was used to classify bacteria?
Physical traits such as shape, number of cells, gram staining, growth temperature range, etc.
What did Carl Woese propose?
Five kingdoms, Bacteira, Archaebacteria, Protista, Fungi, Plantae and Animalia originally. Then elevated Domains above kingdoms
Who came up with the three domains and what are they?
Carl Woese - Eukaryotes, Archaea and Bacteria
What does Woese’s classification emphasise?
The difference between bacteria and archaea
How did Woese come to separate bacteria and archaea?
Based on the observation that ribosomes are not the same in all cells
What did Woese do differently in classification?
He based the split on genetic rather than morphological traits
What did Woese analyse?
Small subunit ribosomal RNA from various organisms 16S for prokaryotes and 18S for eukaryotes
What does SSU rRNA stand for?
Small subunit ribosomal RNA
What does SSU rRNA encode?
Encode for RNA molecules used in translation of nucleic acid
